


what's left unspoken

by AmyIssen



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, F/M, Introspection, Pre-Relationship, Retelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-17
Updated: 2019-10-17
Packaged: 2020-12-20 20:38:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21062849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmyIssen/pseuds/AmyIssen
Summary: Hordak reflects on his partnership with Entrapta, their brief shared moments of silence and how her presence changed everything around him.





	what's left unspoken

**Author's Note:**

> [sips coffee, looks around, cleans spider-webs]  
Hey! I haven't posted anything here in... years? Hopefully, this is an acceptable comeback of sorts!  
I wrote most of this right after watching Season 3, then promptly forgot about it. Now, since season 4 is fast approaching, I felt like finishing this before it aired.  
This started more as a challenge for me, because Hordak is not the type of character I usually write about, much less from his perspective, but I wanted to explore how his feelings for Entrapta started. Since I've been sailing this ship since season 2, I figured I needed to write about them at least once, dammit!  
(Also, disclaimer, English is not my first language! I think I'm good enough at it, but, still, if anything looks weird, let me know! I'll be happy to fix it.)

Silence was something Hordak greatly appreciated.

He'd grown accustomed to it; worked better with it. Once, so long ago it felt like _centuries,_ he had spent so much time alone rebuilding himself and his surroundings with debris, that silence had become the norm. A comfort, almost.

But Hordak knew no comfort. Not then. Not from Horde Prime and certainly not in Etheria.

And it stayed that way as, slowly, silence became murmuring, and murmuring became shouting. And the Fright Zone rose from the ashes of his certain doom. A success born from failure. His greatest achievement.

And he hated it.

Maybe he had grown rusty in his exile, but running the Horde took too much out of his energy. If only his greatest worry were the conquering of Etheria and the pushback from the Rebellion, and not having to entertain the theatrics, incompetence, and _dishonesty_ from what were supposed to be his highest-ranked soldiers and confidantes.

He had himself to blame for that, in part, for allowing children to climb so swiftly in ranks. Like a fool, he had been under the illusion that Shadow Weaver trained the cadets to be ruthless. Raised them for the sole purpose of being implacable in and out of battle, and that remained true, in a sense. 

Until one of them became _She-Ra_.

Needless to say, that threw a wrench on an already arduous task.

Though the madness of the Fright Zone tested his patience, he had his ways to circumvent it; hiding in his sanctum. Drowning in his silence, his work and his ever-growing pains that crept through his feeble body. Days upon days of commanding from the shadows, hoping that his cowardice would turn into power.

There he found something resembling peace with his private silence and the few sounds that invaded it. The constant humming of electricity, the creaking of metal, the occasional titter from Imp followed by the sound of something being knocked over. The sharp releases of steam, the muted gurgle of his cemetery of failed clones and his own heavy footsteps, circling the lab, always deep in thought.

As the war raged, and more mayhem landed on his lap, his resolve waned and his ire grew. He must be cursed, he thought, to remain trapped in this isolated _primitive_ planet - scarcely conquering a quarter of it. All his effort, all his rage and despair, would all culminate into a disgracing defeat. Unrecognized by Horde Prime, betrayed, cast aside and defeated. By teenagers and princesses.

Until his universe flipped upside down as fast as her name could be called.

Entrapta. _Princess_ _of Dryl._

A - very - unwelcome intrusion at first, her presence put him on edge for days. First, as Catra and Scorpia held her prisoner. Extracting information could be useful, but having an actual princess in the Fright Zone was a liability he didn't care to risk. The chances that the rebellion would try another attack rose with every hour she remained there.

But they never came back.

After the failed Bright Moon battle, he didn't think much about the princess again for a while, too troubled by future plans. He knew that, whatever she was still doing in the Horde, her allyship could be beneficial, considering the quality of the devices she built.

But, time, as it did, continued to pass, and his project continued to fail and he couldn't stabilize the energy source. His body still deteriorated, while the princesses only made more and more progress.

And amongst the dead ends, _the_ princess, the one he had tried to avoid with varying degrees of success, got too close for comfort.

And ignored him as he ordered her to leave.

And seemingly didn't care about punishment.

_And_ got the power generator stable.

And was the first person to actually talk to him in what seemed like eons.

Quickly and boldly she proved herself to be a useful resource for the construction of his portal, her intelligence and ingenuity bringing an entire set of new perspectives to the project that he hadn't considered, and he could almost admit it pleased him. Just watching the gleam in her eyes as she discovered that there were other planets and galaxies out there, was fascinating; something so _trivial_ to him, but unimaginably important for her.

She was brilliant, Hordak wasn't one to deny the obvious; a true shining star among the dull nothingness of Etheria. Tireless, sometimes using resources he wouldn't have dreamed of. There was a fresh aura surrounding her, something profoundly energetic, almost as if she buzzed with something other than electricity every time she swung by him, and she had a strange skill of bringing order within chaos to his sanctum.

Suddenly, his routine had changed dramatically. He still spent most of the day in the laboratory, but with an extra set of hands - and... hair - beside him, everything seemed to be faster-paced.

Of course their partnership came with its problems; namely, Entrapta herself; to put it bluntly, having someone so intensively boisterous and talkative around was... odd. Not that those were entirely bad traits, but they _were_ traits that conflicted with Hordak’s.

That, however, didn't mean his moments of silence were gone; they were just unevenly spaced now. And shared.

Despite the fact that now he had to talk a lot more with the princess, he found himself working in silence for such long periods of time that he almost forgot she was even there, but a glance across the lab would often show the woman working on something, either murmuring unintelligibly into her recorder, or just dangling around, Imp stalking her closely.

(He'd noticed that the creature had taken a fondness towards her. Something quite unusual, considering its usual behavior. The only person it had not made its entire purpose to irritate was Hordak himself, but not Entrapta; he'd catch Imp repeating her ramblings idly when nothing exciting happened in the day, with a genuine, terrifying smile on its face.)

Regardless, he could live with chatter if it meant having the occasional silence to share with her, even if there was no longer stillness to it. And there was a surprising amount of it when he least expected it.

Some days, he turned to face her only to find that she had been looking at him already, with fluorescent eyes and a smile playing on her lips, looking like she finally figured out _something_ about him. She'd turn away, without a rush, and go back to whatever she had been doing at the moment, the green glow of the monitors accentuating her features, leaving him puzzled - and feeling as if he was burning.

Something within his DNA, whatever remained undamaged of it, yelled in the back of his mind. It was something he couldn't recognize, couldn't tell what it meant. It _must_ be negative, he thought; his body was already such a husk of what it used to be, but he could only assume it was getting worse.

There was work to be done, though. And soon, he was looking at her too. At first, to recognize her presence, in his terms.

But every time he saw her smile as the project advanced, he couldn't help but smile too.

He only understood that voice in the back of his head when Entrapta ran towards the exploding portal and he shielded her in the fraction of a second -

\- because in that second, as she looked at Hordak, backlit by the portal, expression unreadable, he heard it loud and clear -

Distraction.

In the wake of the blast his armor was ruined, no amount of repairs could bring it back to what it was, and they were back at square one, but she was unscathed. He would say it was a small price to pay, but his very being disagreed. He had put himself in harm's way, for _her_. Recklessly.

He felt his mind clear, then. _Send her away. Hide the damage, forget about the damned portal;_ maybe it was doomed to fail from the start and he was too blind to understand it then. Too far gone in the depths of purpose.

Yet, of course, she wouldn't... _let him_, as she hadn't before. And he didn't have the nerve or the energy to make her go away.

And he wondered, as she insisted on feeding him soup in small cups, and covering him in dreadfully soft blankets, what had become of this partnership. It wasn't like anything he had before Etheria, among the Horde, and he couldn't define what it was.

It went beyond his comprehension, how he could look at someone who wouldn't avert their eyes, how fear no longer seemed to loom in his surroundings and how Entrapta didn't seem to know the meaning of the word, and yet knew so much about him. More than anyone else.

And, perhaps regrettably, that was a _good_ thing.

Entrapta's magic wasn't actual magic, but her way of seeing things that could be fixed and improved where most wouldn't see it, but Hordak wasn't enough of a fool to think that he could be one of those things. He knew the nature of his goals, knew what he did to reach them, knew what was yet to be done.

For now, he could settle for new armor, if begrudgingly at first. He could settle with the notion of having an intellectual equal by his side, even though she operated in a completely different rhythm than he did.

He could use a little different.

Through the hum of the power generator, Hordak listened. Now, Entrapta was fixing the upper part of the blown-up portal, perched on a makeshift scaffolding she built the other day with scrap metal she found around the base. "Don't worry, it's safe!" she said, as Hordak eyed her blankly when she used it for the first time, but he didn't comment further.

He approached her and looked up. Entrapta was hunched over the metal beam, torch in hand and mask covering her face, more focused than usual, with no snacks in sight. Imp was perched near her, watching her with the sort of curiosity that he'd only seen on Entrapta herself.

He must have stared for a while, because, before he could look away, she put down her torch and pulled her mask up. She looked down, eyebrows knitted together, but quickly, a smile spread across her face. Hordak motioned his head towards her, unsmiling, almost nodding. She kept her eyes glued on him, smile only getting bigger. Then, suddenly, she grabbed something that sat beside her and dropped it in his direction.

Hordak caught it with ease, barely moving his arm to capture it from the air, and examined it.

It was his six-sided hex driver.

He glanced at Entrapta again and she still smiled smugly from above him. He raised an eyebrow, and, maybe, a corner of his mouth, and she only returned him a shrug. No words were exchanged - none were needed.

Entrapta swung to the other side of the room with a high pitched cheer, Imp flying close behind her and Hordak stood alone, driver in hand.

In the corner of his eye, he saw a reflection on one of the glass chambers. A man looked back; with his disheveled hair and modern armor, no cape over his shoulders. His eyes lacked their usual edge, and a smile sat awkwardly on his lips. By all means, that had to be a complete stranger, yet he still looked too much like himself. The perfect clone.

Turning around, he marched in the same direction as Entrapta. But before that, he allowed himself to laugh.

**Author's Note:**

> Not to be like "wahhh, this was terrible, sowwy", but I really don't write that frequently, so I honestly don't know if this was good or not. I hope you liked it though?! Let me know in the comments, I love to chat.  
Also, I'm mostly on twitter now, but you can find me on my tumblr, amy-issen!


End file.
